Spider-Man: The Animated Series Episode Fifty-Six: Six Forgotten Warriors, Chapter Three: Secrets of the Six

 Secrets of the Six

First Aired: October 3rd, 1997

Synopsis: Peter and Robbie go to see Omar Mosely, his mentor, who reveals that he has Captain America's shield. Mosely gives the origin of Captain America and explains that after the super-soldier serum was lost, five more people were experimented on in an attempt to recreate the formula. They became the heroes The Destroyer, Miss America, The Thunderer, The Black Marvel, and The Whizzer, and although their powers had limited use and could be controlled via rings they wore, they fought alongside Captain America as the Six American Warriors. After discovering of a doomsday device the Red Skull had created, they went to stop him from using it, but in the process, Captain America and the Red Skull fell into some beams which caused them to vanish. The remaining warriors vowed to free Captain America one day, but were forced to disband. They each took one of the keys needed to activate the doomsday device to stop it from being activated. In the present, Kingpin reveals that he's used some databases he's hacked into to discover the identities of the warriors, and sends Rhino after The Whizzer and Vulture after Miss America.

 

Spider-Man goes home to refill his webbing, where Keene Marlowe is trying to convince Aunt May to give him something Ben had hidden in the house. Scorpion and Shocker show up and Spider-Man fights them, before being unexpectedly helped by The Destroyer, who weakens as quickly as he showed up. Scorpion and Shocker are able to get The Destroyer's key, and after they're gone, he unmasks as Marlowe. He gives his origin to Spider-Man, explaining that he was friends with Ben Parker, and that after he became The Destroyer, he told the girl he and Ben were interested in, leading to her choosing him. Even though his powers were limited, he used them to impress her, as he was worried she only wanted to be with him because of them. One day he tried stopping some muggers using them, but she was caught in the crossfire and so he gave Ben his costume, ring, and key to hide to remove the temptation to use them again. He and Spider-Man head off to SHIELD, and Spider-Man asks whether he regrets not being a hero for all this time, to which Marlowe answers yes.

 

Places That Spider-Man Will Chase Shocker To:

• Making up for last episode, in this episode Spider-Man webs up Shocker and throws him out of Aunt May's house

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Captain America is voiced by David Hayter, who definitely won't voice any more super soldiers in the future, nor will he have anything to do with any other adaptations of comic books.
• When The Whizzer is attacked by the Rhino, he's working as an art teacher, and is criticising a drawing of The Thing his student is doing, saying that the head is too small in proportion to the rest of the body. From the way the student defends it, saying that things are different to when he drew comics, it feels like it's supposed to be commentary on the contemporary comics industry, but it's hard to say.
  
• Marlowe muses that he couldn't tell whether his wife truly loved him for who he was, or for him being The Destroyer, moments before saying that after the war she was trying to convince him to give up the costume for good. I think he might have answered his own question there.
• The Red Skull and Cap apparently disappeared at some point in the 40s, yet the man claiming to be his son from last episode looks to be in his forties at most. It's likely that the writers just didn't think things through properly, but I guess it could be foreshadowing that he's not actually his son and is claiming the name of the Red Skull to gather followers? (I have no idea whether that is the case, but I kind of hope it is now).
  

Review: Let's face it, this episode is basically just a big infodump, even moreso than some of the stuff that's happened in the last two episodes, but it's so unashamed about it - and more importantly, up front about the information, rather than raising more questions as information is revealed - that it manages to work. With the exception of Cap, I can't say that I'm too thrilled by any of the warriors as characters (lessee, Black Marvel trained the Slingers, Destroyer later became Union Jack, I think(?), Miss America and the Whizzer were mistakenly thought to be Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch's parents, and I have no idea what the Thunderer's done), but their role in the story is certainly interesting, and I do appreciate the show mining some Golden Age characters who have a fair bit of potential.

This episode does a good job at stepping things forwards, too - last episode we knew that Spider-Man needed to find the doomsday device in New York while racing against Kingpin and the Red Skull; we now know that the actual way to do that is to find the Six Forgotten Warriors. (Well, five). It also pays off Marlowe from the first episode of this arc, and while it's obvious in retrospect, I honestly didn't think that he would be a retired superhero when he first appeared. It's a - I hesitate to use the word twist - that works quite well.

We also get a bit of payoff to the mystery of Captain America, who was set up early last season. I have no idea whether this was planned out that far in advance, but either way, I'm keen to see if him returning is in the cards. Probably the biggest flaw I have with this episode is that in amongst Marlowe giving his origin, he mentions that the death of his wife taught both he and Ben that with great power there must also come great responsibility - did we really need an origin for how Ben came to have that worldview?

Overall though, this does a pretty good job of advancing the plot forwards, giving us plenty of information, and remaining interesting in its own right. If you've got to do an infodump episode, this is how you do it.